This question deals with the last two entries (hda1& hdb1) of the following /etc/fstab file. Everything else works fine. (RedHat v9, all updates)

After I boot, I'm getting a "permission denied" error when trying to access /dev/hda1 & /dev/hdb1 .

**********************************************************
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/number2 vfat defaults 0 0

*****************************************
The locations /mnt/windows and /mnt/number2 exist, and work fine when mounted manually.

Now, 'root' can access everything just fine. AlI need is read access for any other user, and have it mount itself at boot. I tried changing permissions, but I get the error message "file system is read only". (Which is what I want, partially.)

I've made some half-hearted attempts at changing permissions, but I've read that they change for the time being, and revert back to the original after a reboot. I need the perms to allow everyone read-only access to hda1 and hdb1 and have the perms stay after rebooting.

I'm fairly sure the "defaults" part in the above fstab entries need to be changed, but I can't figure out what the options are, let alone what they should be.

Hope thats clear enough. Thanks for any input.

pretty common question around here.... set defaults,umask=000 as the options for those entires instead of just defaults.

incidentally you should be able to appreciate why you can't set file permissions on a fat32 drive under unix as the fat32 filesystem has no conecpt of file ownership and such, so the data is just plain not there in the first place to be changed.

try adding "user" before "defaults", that should work.

Thanks.

I first tried "user,defaults" then "users,defaults", neither worked for me. Don't know why.

However, when I put "umask=000,defaults" in, it worked fine.

Thanks to both of you for your help.

If I've got this umask thing understood correctly, Execute=1, Write=2, Read=4 - so - does "000" mean all access is granted? If so, would "777" be the same thing?


Again, thanks.

well, both are kinda right

if you set a umask, you subtract. if you do a chmod, you add.

so if you want to give a file all permissions, you chmod 777 <file>

when you set a umask, it determines the permissions on files that you create. so a umask=000 is like chmod 777 to a file.

i hope i didnt' mix that up. somebody correct me if im wrong.